Thursday, September 24, 2009

Re-examining Ancient Athens

A lot of what we know about Ancient Athens from just our general knowledge has been obstructed by the prudery of archaeologists of centuries past, with ‘inappropriate’ vases locked away in museum storage for centuries. In the next few paragraphs, I do not wish to deny or deride the achievements of a society which we take so much inspiration from, and who we have taken so much from and incorporated into our modern society today (like democracy, for example).

For most historians, the Attic world was the beginning of civilisation, so it’s quite apt that I begin my blogging here.

One of my primary interests while examining Greek art, especially vase paintings, is the depiction of women. The often-underplayed patriarchal nature of Attic society set up the roots for millennia of patriarchy in the western world, and as a woman born post-feminism, to a generation who expects equality, it is fascinating, and often shocking to discover this facet of the Hellenistic world.

It is now known that Attic women served the purpose of objects, and being a woman in Ancient Athens was a very undesirable situation by our standards (or, more aptly, by my standards, perhaps). What could be worse was being a slave woman, or a prostitute, the two were the same in the matter of social status. Even men who afforded slave women or prostitutes the privileges and ‘kindnesses’ (for lack of a better word) bestowed on citizen women risked losing their estates and civic rights, like in the case of Stephanus.*

Every aspect of Greek society seems to be focused on the irrational gynophobia that had been a part of society for generations, and an integral part, some theorists claim, to explaining the conditions of gender identity in Greece and the rigidly protected status-quo based on gender and sexuality.

However, past scholars of Greek history seemed to gloss over these aspects, unpalatable to puritanical western tastes. One scholar described Athenian prostitutes as worthless and depravity, while Nietzsche rationed that in a society as advanced as the Athenian, it is inevitable that women are reduced to the status of vegetables. Even until today, “prostitution is one of the rare service industries in which the customers regularly denigrate the purveyor” (Eva Kuels, The Reign of the Phallus, p154), the very basis of which is a circular logic, as, like any other trade, it wouldn’t exist if there was no demand.

Many Greek prostitutes were bought, like Neara*, by private citizens for personal use as though they were slaves. But then, being property, had no access to income and could therefore not buy their freedom even if they did have the option.

Citizen women were given little higher regard than prostitutes and slaves. A new wife was treated to the same welcoming, pouring a basket of nuts over her head, as a newly purchased slave. They were at the complete control of their husbands, who had the social, political and economic power to subdue women as they wish. They were uneducated and expected to retain a high level of sexual morality while male citizens were allowed –nay, expected – to participate in the sexual aspects of the symposium and other such events, where infidelity to their wives was essential. They were excluded from public life with the circular logic that continued for centuries after the decline of Athens; women were deprived of education, and excluded from social and political life for being uneducated.

The inconsistencies of the Greek world are plenty in regards to the gender differences. Perhaps it did stem from an ingrained phobia that women needed to be tamed to prevent a collapse of the patriarchy, the refined social system created and maintained by men. Perhaps women and men alike were conditioned to accept this society and did not feel the need to question or examine the inequalities so blatant to postmodern scholars. What is certain is that we cannot read about the ancient injustices and not be shocked, even though one must try as hard as possible to not see history through our own social conditioning. And we are not unlike the archaeologists who found the vase paintings of symposium scenes too ‘pornographic’ to ever display, because really, very little changes over centuries. Or millennia, for that matter.

*Stephanus treated the Corinthian prostitute Neara as his wife, although she was a prostitute and had been since she was a very young girl and passed off Neara’s daughter as a citizen woman and married her off to a respectable Athenian man